Where Birds Will Fly
by Levity Lirum
Summary: Realising she wanted a name, he caste around in the chaotic mess of him mind. He caught a brief flash of black wings and a stream of birdsong. Black wings and birdsong. A black bird? Blackbird? Yes, he thought his name was...
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I only own Blackbird as a character, but not all of him as he is based on parts of other characters. Everything else belongs to or is based on Teen Titans, Marvel, DC Comics or whatever else.**

'Falling Inside The Black' is going to be updated soon, but until then, this is my newest baby.

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Ever since he had been 'born', Blackbird had known that he wasn't Natural.

Blackbird, as he had named himself in his first few moments of awareness, had been born as the sun was exactly half-sunk behind the horizon in an alleyway in industrial Jump City...

...As nothing more or less than a freak accident in a fight between the Teen Titans and 'The Amazing Mumbo'; A chaotic mix created when Boy Wonder Robin was struck by the combined forces of Mumbo and Raven's opposing magic and Starfire's starblasts.

Robin appeared to have gotten out of the blast with no injuries, leading the Titans to believe that their leader had been protected by the contrasting energies present. They did not notice Blackbird go flying further into the alley and behind some garbage.

Blackbird had woken naked and covered in ash. This was where the story begins.

*****

"Hey," A disinterested girl's voice asked. "You alright?"

The boy twitched and squinted in an attempt to see through the gloom, flashing glowing eyes the colour of bluebell flames.

"...Wha? Who...?"

Having caught sight of the glowing blue eyes and realising that he was probably a meta-human, the girl knelt beside the older teen and helped him sit up, blushing when she realised he was naked except for the ash and grime.

"I'm Jinx." The girl, who had just introduced herself, was now revealed as a pale girl with cotton-candy pink hair and slit-pupil eyes the same hue as deep pink diamonds.

Realising she wanted a name, he caste around in the chaotic mess of him mind and subconsciously rubbed his head as he thought. He caught a brief flash of black wings and a stream of birdsong. Black wings and birdsong. A black bird? Blackbird? Yes, he thought his name was...

"...Blackbird." He said, though not to without doubt. "I think my name is Blackbird." He gently leant away from Jinx to sit on his own.

Jinx, for her part, was curious about the teen and rather thankful that he had pulled her from her doubtful thoughts on her standing in the world.

"What are you doing here?" She gestured around the darkened alley, "And where are your clothes?"

Blackbird looked around, only just realising where he was and that he was naked. As he tried to recall how he got there, he was suddenly hit by mind-numbing pain and all his muscles started seizing.

He vaguely realised and was grateful that the girl, Jinx, was holding his head in her lap as she tried to hold down the thrashing of his torso, a piece of plastic hastily shoved in his mouth to both muffle his screams and stop him from biting his tongue.

Lost in his haze of pain, he didn't realise that the concrete beneath his flailing limbs crack under the force of his blows or that black energy swirled free and dangerous around the two teens as flames the same glowing blue as his eyes chased across his, then her, skins, protecting them from the shrapnel flung up by the wind created by the black energy.

Jinx, however, was well-aware of these things, leaving her in a state of shock, awe and fear as she struggled to hold the teen, Blackbird, down.

It happened quickly; so quickly she hadn't time to protect herself with her power of Probability Manipulation. As the powers began flaring even further out of control, the blue fire-like energy surged more strongly towards her and engulfed her.

Time hung immobilized for a few moments or eternity as the world suddenly became a babbling mess of sounds, emotions, pictures, tastes, smells, textures, impressions, knowledge and finally, in her mind's eye, a translucent figure of swirling black and luminescent blue flung itself at her, a figure of grey and glowing pink, wrapping its 'arms' around her and burying its 'head' in her middle like a frightened child. It took her less than an instant to realise that the blue-black figure was Blackbird.

The 'noise' receded a bit and Jinx was able to look 'up' into the seething, chaotic mess of Blackbird's psyche.

*****

Hours later, after Blackbird's power had long since settled, Jinx gently laid the both older and younger boy against the wall, numb from what she had learnt and gained.

Maybe, just maybe, she could play the hero just this once, just for this Blackbird.

*****

You know you wanna review. C'mon. Just press the little button down here and tell me what you think.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I only own Blackbird as a character, but not all of him as he is based on parts of other characters. Everything else belongs to or is based on Teen Titans, Marvel, DC Comics or whatever else.**

Yes, Robin is alive and everyone but Jinx and Blackbird don't know that anything happened. Furthermore, his mindest has changed slightly due to a slight 'bleeding effect' from the others who contributed to his creation.

I will be putting up a few challenges on my profile if you're interested.

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Six months later...

Blackbird, under the created persona of Graham "Grey" Richard Crane, lounged comfortably on the couch in the two bedroom apartment he shared part-time with Jinx, completing an assignment due for school at the end of the week.

He had chosen his name for specific reasons: Graham in remembrance of Grayson, Richard for his 'other self's' secret identity, and Crane from one of Alfred Pennyworthy's middle names.

Blackbird, after muddling and struggling his way through an identity crisis, had settled into the false existence as an only child whose Romani mother had died in an accident years earlier and a father who was an officer in the Navy, explaining why he lived alone. Both his 'parents' had been only children and his respective grandparents had died; his maternal grandfather recently, explaining why he had just moved into town on his own. According to his records and birth certificates, he had just turned sixteen and nine months last week, whereas the actual Robin, the Primary from whom he'd been copied, was still only fifteen. As far as Blackbird could guess, it probably had something to do with the ages of the others, the Secondaries, involved in his creation. Mumbo was practically ancient and Blackbird considered himself incredibly lucky he wasn't middle-aged as a result. Raven was 17 and Starfire was 16, so he suspected that, as the two who had input the most power to create him, he got a mix of their ages as certain abilities he had only became active at certain ages.

He still got the heebie-jeebies when he thought about what had happened that week when he went through his version of the Tamaranian Puberty period. And Starfire thought hers was embarrassing...

Jinx literally broke a rib she was laughing so hard.

For the most part, Blackbird managed to avoid his depression brought on by the whole 'Existential Anomaly' thing by doing his damnedest to not think about it. It was almost sad that, hiding in the background as a reclusive brainiac who always had his head in a book of some kind, wore thick black square glasses (fake), scruffy clothes and his shoulder-length hair in a sloppy bun, Blackbird had figured out more villain secret identities than as a teen hero.

He had almost blown his cover when he figured out that Nicolai 'Nick' Lane, his lab partner in biology and captain of the school swim team, was Red X. He got more annoyed when he found himself grudgingly liking the annoying bastard; Red X was even worse when he was acting as the normal teenager rather than the cool thief. Thankfully, he was apparently unimportant enough that Nick didn't even notice when 'Grey' had a mini conniption in class.

Blackbird had also found out that Poison Ivy's 'nephew', Kurama Isley, who was an orphan and under the guardianship of Dr Pamela Isley, was also attending Jump City High. He was, in fact, one of the children who had taken shelter in Poison Ivy's park during No Man's Land and his prolonged contact with such a variety of plants infused with meta-energy that his unformed latent meta-energies had mimicked Poison Ivy's on a much larger scale. She had half-kept him after that, until she had lost interest in humans and he had kept in contact with her. Blackbird suspected that she remained as his guardian and supplied him with an allowance because of her practically nonexistent human maternal instincts. He doubted she even knew why she felt like that for Kurama. Anyhow, Kurama was mostly a high-acheiving, modest pretty-boy with a kind heart at school, and a cool, logical, frankly terrifying costumed antihero called Razorleaf. Razorleaf usually kept a low profile and didn't get involved with any hardcore villains if he could help it, but he was also one of only three people who were able to recognise Grey Crane as Blackbird. They had a pretty good working relationship.

Like Blackbird, the only things stopping Kurama from being a criminal mastermind or supervillain were lack of ambition, common sense and the fact that they were actually _sane._

Neither heros nor supervillians had long life expectancies.

Blackbird had also spotted who he thought might be Cheshire, Tara the Terra look-alike and a series of small-time 'villains' who'd either wise up and quit or spend the rest of their admittedly short lives as cannon fodder for bigger fish.

Still, Blackbird supposed that he was happy. Sure he missed the Titans and Batman and Alfred, but he had Jinx and Kurama and his gimpy-legged cat, Scurvy. And, of course, Roy Harper, aka Speedy.

Blackbird didn't know all the details, but sometime after that battle between the teen heros and their antagonists, (something to do with freezing (neither side was really willing to talk about it, frankly)), Speedy had left the Titans East after a really bad argument with Aqualad, whom he had always had difficulty dealing with and understanding. He had then somehow gotten hooked on drugs and been disowned by his guardian (Oliver Queen, aka Green Arrow) as a result. Speedy had only survived as long as he had because Dinah Lance (aka Black Canary) had set up a small account for him.

Blackbird had run across Speedy by accident on a night jaunt to 'acquire' some materials needed for a 'project' in Bludhaven. Speedy, out of shape and trying to get clean for Dinah's sake, had been in the process of getting his arse handed to him by a group of small-time gangsters. Because Speedy and Robin had spent a lot of time as friends when they were younger, Blackbird had felt the need to play hero and saved Speedy's arse. The redhead had initially mistaken Blackbird for Robin, but had realised his mistake even around his concussion when he'd used the powers he'd inherited from Raven to heal a bullet wound in Speedy's leg. Recognising the needlemarks, Speedy and Blackbird had had a nice little chat about drugs and heros not mixing and dumped the redhead in one of the better Bludhaven rehab centres.

Jinx had nearly killed herself laughing when, during a spar between the two, a drug-free Speedy had tracked down the 'teen hero who had saved his life' and, seeing someone who was known to have a villainous past and fearing she may have regressed, attempted to 'save' Blackbird.

The poor birdie couldn't recall anyone else who had the nerve to repeatedly laugh at the trauma and embarrassment of his life... At least without attempting to stifle it.

Blackbird was pulled out of his memories when Scurvy jumped up on the couch and settled himself on the textbook Blackbird was using.

He rolled his eyes and glanced at the old clock on top of the television.

10:17pm.

Blackbird picked up the cat and nuzzled into his fur, cuddling the critter to his chest. He'd promised Kurama he'd help with a theft the redhead was doing for Poison Ivy that night. A rare Ghost Orchid specimen, the first cultivated outside its habitat, was being quietly examined and catalogued at the Jump Botanical Society before being transferred to Metropolis.

There would be guards around, but that was what Blackbird was for. The plan was for Blackbird to break into the section where poisonous plants were studied and steal samples, tests and data, create 'noise' to draw the guards whilst Razorleaf lay in waiting for the botanists to move the orchid to the vault until the intruder was dealt with. Once the specimen was acquired, Razorleaf would set off a buzzer that would let Blackbird know when he could bolt.

There were, however, contingency plans.

Something Blackbird learnt (though Robin never did), from his stint as Batman's sidekick (What was he thinking with those short-shorts and pixie boots? No wonder the villains used to crack paedophile jokes about dear old Batsy.) was that you should never be a successful career criminal/hero on luck alone. One must have contingency plans.

It goes with the saying 'No battle plan survives contact with the enemy'.

Hence why improvising was a hero/criminal's best friend.

Blackbird sighed and got up to change.

He was not a stupid criminal. He had padded plastic armour moulded to his legs, arse and crotch, hidden under baggy black cargo pants. Wraps wound around his ankles and wrists to lend support, hidden beneath knee-length dull-black combat-boots and dull black vambraces. A slat of iron ran along the outer arm of the vambraces to block blows and blades. Plastic and metal armour was moulded to his chest, back and abdomen in segments for manoeuvrability and hidden under a loose tank-top than flowed loosly at the waist. A dulled metal, scaled, choker that covered most of his neck and parts of his upper chest finished his protective layers. The utility belt around his waist carried some but not all of the toys he carried with him; toys that were equal to and better than Robin's.

He no longer could afford Robin's morals and ethics.

He finished his outfit with a black domino mask with pointed ends rather than Robin's rounded ones, his blue-black hair flowing lose down his back.

Blackbird locked up his apartment and took to the roofs from the fire escape.

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**AN:** As part Tamaranian, Blackbird did, in fact, have to go through Tamaranian puberty to acheived the full effects. Details may or may not pop up later, a la Jinx.

Reviews are welcome and feed the soul.


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